Hearsay Social's Content Exchange Keeps the Conversation Flowing

"It is very difficult for marketers to create new content on a regular basis," said Amy Millard, Hearsay's vice president of marketing. "Still, it is an essential piece for social marketing now. Content Exchange gives social marketers an easy way to discover content that has been curated and is most suited for their particular sites." It also gives companies new to social marketing an easy way to set up a site and get a conversation going with its customers.

By now, it has been drilled into most marketers' heads: Social media is all about conversation -- a two-way conversation. Oftentimes, the conversation entails responding to customers' comments, requests or complaints. From the customer's perspective, it almost certainly means offers of discounts and specials.

What to do, though, when the conversation well runs dry? Well, there is always that other social media marketing truism: Consumers like useful and engaging content, such as recipes or stock tips or advice on how to deal with a surly teenager.

That is all well and good -- but quality content can quickly add up in terms of cost, especially when brands want to bring customers to their sites every day or frequently throughout the week.

Content Exchange Lets Brands Shop for Content

Hearsay Social, a provider of sales and marketing software, is launching Content Exchange in response to this need.

Content Exchange is a platform that allows Hearsay Social's users to seed their social media profiles with financial news, entertainment news, photos, videos, lifestyle articles, and so on. It has partnered with several media companies to provide the content.

"It is very difficult for marketers to create new content on a regular basis," Amy Millard, Hearsay's vice president of marketing, told CRM Buyer. "Still, it is an essential piece for social marketing now. Content Exchange gives social marketers an easy way to discover content that has been curated and is most suited for their particular sites."

It also gives companies new to social marketing an easy way to set up a site and get a conversation going with its customers, she added.

The Partners

Content Exchange is launching with Demand Media -- which includes ehow.com, Cracked.com and Livestrong.com -- and Thomson Reuters as partners. Hearsay Social has also entered into a relationship with Tribune Media Services to provide custom content via its stable of experts and other sources.

The company is working on deals with other content providers as well, said Millard.

Once customers have signed appropriate licenses with the providers, she explained, they are free to use the content on their social media sites, including Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The Farmers Insurance Example

Content Exchange is also well suited for a company like Farmers Insurance, which uses the Hearsay sales and marketing platform. It has thousands of insurance agents working for the company, many of which have their own Facebook pages, Millard said. Monitoring all of those Facebook pages to ensure they are in keeping with the brand's image can problematic.

Using Content Exchange, though, the agents can seed their individual pages with content that has been approved by corporate marketing. It gives the agents flexibility to choose content they feel is best suited for their clients, while adhering to corporate policies.

"All we do is provide the back end integration," Millard said.

Erika Morphy has been writing about technology, finance and business issues for more than 20 years. She lives in Silver Spring, Md.